Читать книгу Human Nature - Edith Wharton - Страница 9

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After my departure from Les Calanques I had no news of Mrs. Glenn till she returned to Paris in October. Then she begged me to call at the hotel where I had previously seen her, and where she was now staying with Stephen—and the Browns.

She suggested, rather mysteriously, my dining with her on a particular evening, when, as she put it, “everybody” would be out; and when I arrived she explained that Stephen had gone to the country for the week-end, with some old comrades from Julian’s, and that the Browns were dining at a smart nightclub in Montmartre. “So we’ll have a quiet time all by ourselves.” She added that Steve was so much better that he was trying his best to persuade her to spend the winter in Paris, and let him get back to his painting; but in spite of the good news I thought she looked worn and dissatisfied.

I was surprised to find the Browns still with her, and told her so.

“Well, you see, it’s difficult,” she returned with a troubled frown. “They love Stephen so much that they won’t give him up; and how can I blame them? What are my rights, compared with theirs?”

Finding this hard to answer, I put another question. “Did you enjoy your quiet time with Stephen while they were at Juan-les-Pins?”

“Oh, they didn’t go; at least Mrs. Brown didn’t—Chrissy she likes me to call her,” Mrs. Glenn corrected herself hurriedly. “She couldn’t bear to leave Stephen.”

“So she sacrificed Juan-les-Pins, and that handsome cheque?”

“Not the cheque; she kept that. Boy went,” Mrs. Glenn added apologetically. Boy and Chrissy—it had come to that! I looked away from my old friend’s troubled face before putting my next question. “And Stephen—?”

“Well, I can’t exactly tell how he feels. But I sometimes think he’d like to be alone with me.” A passing radiance smoothed away her frown. “He’s hinted that, if we decide to stay here, they might be tempted by winter sports, and go to the Engadine later.”

“So that they would have the benefit of the high air instead of Stephen?” She coloured a little, looked down, and then smiled at me. “What can I do?”

I resolved to sound Stephen on his adopted parents. The present situation would have to be put an end to somehow; but it had puzzling elements. Why had Mrs. Brown refused to go to Juan-les-Pins? Was it, as I had suspected, because there were debts, and more pressing uses for the money? Or was it that she was so much attached to her adopted son as to be jealous of his mother’s influence? This was far more to be feared; but it did not seem to fit in with what I knew of Mrs. Brown. The trouble was that what I knew was so little. Mrs. Brown, though in one way so intelligible, was in another as cryptic to me as Catherine Glenn was to Stephen. The surface was transparent enough; but what did the blur beneath conceal? Troubled waters, or just a mud-flat? My only hope was to try to get Stephen to tell me.

Stephen had hired a studio—against his doctor’s advice, I gathered—and spent most of his hours there, in the company of his old group of painting friends. Mrs. Glenn had been there once or twice, but in spite of his being so sweet and dear to her she had felt herself in the way—as she undoubtedly was. “I can’t keep up with their talk, you know,” she explained. With whose talk could she, poor angel?

I suggested that, for the few weeks of their Paris sojourn, it would be kinder to let Stephen have his fling; and she agreed. Afterward, in the mountains, he could recuperate; youth had such powers of self-healing. But I urged her to insist on his spending another winter in the Engadine; not at one of the big fashionable places—

She interrupted me. “I’m afraid Boy and Chrissy wouldn’t like—”

“Oh, for God’s sake; can’t you give Boy and Chrissy another cheque, and send them off to Egypt, or to Monte Carlo?”

She hesitated. “I could try; but I don’t believe she’d go. Not without Stevie.”

“And what does Stevie say?”

“What can he say? She brought him up. She was there—all the years when I’d failed him.”

It was unanswerable, and I felt the uselessness of any advice I could give. The situation could be changed only by some internal readjustment. Still, out of pity for the poor mother, I determined to try a word with Stephen. She gave me the address of his studio, and the next day I went there.

It was in a smart-looking modern building in the Montparnasse quarter; lofty, well-lit and well-warmed. What a contrast to his earlier environment! I climbed to his door, rang the bell and waited. There were sounds of moving about within, but as no one came I rang again; and finally Stephen opened the door. His face lit up pleasantly when he saw me. “Oh, it’s you, my dear fellow!” But I caught a hint of constraint in his voice.

“I’m not in the way? Don’t mind throwing me out if I am.”

“I’ve got a sitter—” he began, visibly hesitating.

“Oh, in that case—”

“No, no; it’s only—the fact is, it’s Chrissy. I was trying to do a study of her—”

He led me across the passage and into the studio. It was large and flooded with light. Divans against the walls; big oak tables; shaded lamps, a couple of tall screens. From behind one of them emerged Mrs. Brown, hatless and slim, in a pale summer-like frock, her chestnut hair becomingly tossed about her eyes. “Dear Mr. Norcutt. So glad you turned up! I was getting such a stiff neck—Stephen’s merciless.”

“May I see the result?” I asked; and “Oh, no,” she protested in mock terror, “it’s too frightful—it really is. I think he thought he was doing a nature morte—lemons and a bottle of beer, or something!”

“It’s not fit for inspection,” Stephen agreed.

The room was spacious, and not over-crowded. Glancing about, I could see only one easel with a painting on it. Stephen went up and turned the canvas face inward, with the familiar gesture of the artist who does not wish to challenge attention. But before he did so I had remarked that the painting was neither a portrait of Mrs. Brown nor a still-life. It was a rather brilliant three-quarter sketch of a woman’s naked back and hips. A model, no doubt—but why did he wish to conceal it?

“I’m so glad you came,” Mrs. Brown repeated, smiling intensely. I stood still, hoping she was about to go; but she dropped down on one of the divans, tossing back her tumbled curls. “He works too hard, you know; I wish you’d tell him so. Steve, come here and stretch out,” she commanded, indicating the other end of the divan. “You ought to take a good nap.”

The hint was so obvious that I said: “In that case I’d better come another time.”

“No, no; wait till I give you a cock-tail. We all need cock-tails. Where’s the shaker, darling?” Mrs. Brown was on her feet again, alert and gay. She dived behind the screen which had previously concealed her, and reappeared with the necessary appliances. “Bring up that little table, Mr. Norcutt, please. Oh, I know—dear Kit doesn’t approve of cock-tails; and she’s right. But look at him—dead beat! If he will slave at his painting, what’s he to do? I was scolding him about it when you came in.”

The shaker danced in her flashing hands, and in a trice she was holding a glass out to me, and another to Stephen, who had obediently flung himself down on the divan. As he took the glass she bent and laid her lips on his damp hair. “You bad boy, you!”

I looked at Stephen. “You ought to get out of this, and start straight off for Switzerland,” I admonished him.

“Oh, hell,” he groaned. “Can’t you get Kit to drop all that?”

Mrs. Brown made an impatient gesture. “Isn’t he too foolish? Of course he ought to go away. He looks like nothing on earth. But his only idea of Switzerland is one of those awful places we used to have to go to because they were cheap, where there’s nothing to do in the evening but to sit with clergymen’s wives looking at stereopticon views of glaciers. I tell him he’ll love St. Moritz. There’s a thrill there every minute.”

Stephen closed his eyes and sank his head back in the cushions without speaking. His face was drawn and weary; I was startled at the change in him since we had parted at Les Calanques.

Mrs. Brown, following my glance, met it with warning brows and a finger on her painted lips. It was like a parody of Mrs. Glenn’s maternal gesture, and I perceived that it meant: “Can’t you see that he’s falling asleep? Do be tactful and slip out without disturbing him.”

What could I do but obey? A moment later the studio door had closed on me, and I was going down the long flights of stairs. The worst of it was that I was not at all sure that Stephen was really asleep.